Alysa Liu may have walked into the 2026 Winter Olympics as a mere contender for a medal, but she left Milan as a superstar. The 20-year-old’s double Olympic gold-winning performance, combined with her effervescent personality, shifted the spotlight onto her and the sport itself, so much so that it has prompted decision-makers within figure skating to take steps to capitalize on it.

That’s exactly what U.S. Figure Skating chief executive officer Matt Farrell has started thinking about, although he’s still in the planning stages.

“We have some of the most famous Olympians in history with Kristi Yamaguchi, Dorothy Hamill, and Peggy Fleming,” Farrell told Sportico. “But Alysa and the [2026 U.S. Olympic] team have transcended that. I think the skaters of today are opening the aperture, if you will, of people looking at [the sport] like, ‘Oh, this might be something for me.’”

However, according to Sportico, even before Farrell and U.S. Figure Skating could act, things had already begun. Sign-ups for learn-to-skate programs across the United States were up, with that figure nearly triple what it had been after the previous Olympics. One local ice rink in Albuquerque saw around 300 people sign up in February alone, ranging from young children to adults.

That is partly thanks to Alysa Liu becoming a mainstream figure. She has been all over the place recently, from Paris Fashion Week to the Oscars after-party red carpet, and even got the key to the city of Oakland. It’s been an incredible time for the 20-year-old, and her attitude to the sport, combined with her rise in popularity, has made things even better for the ISU.

However, the problem is that the Olympics are held once every four years, and the winners of the three Olympics prior to 2026 have never returned. That is common in figure skating as the athletes’ careers are very short, which makes improving visibility tough. But Colin Smith, director general of the International Skating Union (ISU), has plans to change that.

“You’ll always have people who come in for a shorter period of time and leave, and those that want to stay longer,” Smith said in the same interview. “We don’t want them to do one Olympic cycle and then stop skating. We want them to stay on longer. As a governing body, it’s easier for us to build profiles, to make heroes of people if they stay longer.”

But before they can use Alysa Liu’s popularity to change figure skating, it seems Smith and the ISU are attempting to address the major music copyright issue faced by all figure skaters.

Colin Smith brings new hope to music licensing for figure skaters

It all kicked off for Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac when they realized the two Prince tracks they had chosen to skate to wouldn’t be available. That was due to an unresolved music rights issue, which forced the Canadians to rework their program three weeks before the Olympics. They weren’t the only ones imprisoned by copyright law, as Amber Glenn found herself in the midst of a similar issue.

The American figure skater was using Seb McKinnon’s song The Return when the artist posted on social media that the skater had used it “without permission.” However, luckily, Glenn and McKinnon managed to solve the issue before the 26-year-old had to rework her program.

But Petr Gumennik wasn’t that lucky, as while the Canadian figure skating pair got three weeks’ notice, the Russian got two days. Instead, he had to switch to a classical music piece, although he was lucky he wasn’t sued, as the American pair Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier were in 2022. Thus, to help deal with the issues, Smith revealed that they’ve got a plan in place and have begun figuring things out.

“I think we’ve shown as a sport, and not just in the United States, that we can be a marketing partner for an artist,” Farrell said. “It’s not a car advert, it’s not something very, very commercial. This is being used for live art, for performance, for sport.”

However, whether their plans work out is another matter altogether, but clearly, thanks to Alysa Liu and company, both the ISU and the USFS will have their hands full for the next few years. But only time will tell if they really manage to transform the landscape of figure skating for the next generation.